Monthly Archives: July 2017

We were informed by a neighbor of this hearing (not by the tavern itself – though we are listed with CB3 as a local community organization and this establishment is on the park):

Item #7.    Cafe Henrie (Downtown Cafe LLC), 110 Forsyth St (aka 114 Forsyth St) (upgrade to op)

View the applicants questionnaire answers here. Application below.

op means full liquor license – unlike a beer and wine license.

SLA & DCA Licensing Committee: Meets:
Monday, July 17 at 6:30pm — Public Hotel – 215 Chrystie Street (btwn Houston & Stanton Sts)

Generally we oppose additional liquor licenses surrounding the Park especially locations that have never been licensed before (the license stays even if the bar fails).

• Our Park is already well endowed with op licenses. New hotels with lots of OP licenses. (Around the corner on Broome is the former Happy Ending – which was anything but – for this neighborhood). Took a long time and many sleepless nights to remove them.
• Liquor licensed establishments tend to drive other small businesses out – landlords often prefer the more lucrative alcohol establishments to a bodega, a shoe repair, tailor or barber. Businesses that serve our neighborhood.
• This one is 200 feet from a Church (see 200 foot rule below)
• We have a songbird sanctuary across from this site.
• We have 7 high schools, one Middle School and one Pre-School on Forsyth Street that line this park.
• We have a burgeoning homeless population that is often heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol.
• There is no ‘public benefit’ that offsets the difficulties these op licenses bring to the majority of the neighborhood.

We have supported licenses when their main function is not to get people drunk. When the entity offers a public benefit as their key mission (like Dixon Place with the arts) or when stipulations are all we can hope for to curb excesses.

No matter what, new licenses mean the public must become the watchdogs of bars and clubs. We think we have better things to do with our time.

Proud to be in such good company on this award! Thank you Design Trust for Public Space!

– Stanton Building Task Force (University Settlement, Green Map System and the Sara Roosevelt Park Coalition)

We were informed by a neighbor of this hearing (not by the tavern itself – though we are listed with CB3 as a local community organization and this establishment is on the park):

Item #7.    Cafe Henrie (Downtown Cafe LLC), 110 Forsyth St (aka 114 Forsyth St) (upgrade to op)

View the applicants questionnaire answers here. Application below.

op means full liquor license – unlike a beer and wine license.

SLA & DCA Licensing Committee: Meets:
Monday, July 17 at 6:30pm — Public Hotel – 215 Chrystie Street (btwn Houston & Stanton Sts)

Generally we oppose additional liquor licenses surrounding the Park especially locations that have never been licensed before (the license stays even if the bar fails).

Some local “good news”

Our Free Breakfast Lunch for Children Food Truck is Back! Invigorating the space near the children’s playground at Rivington Street with generosity and welcome and a terrific staff. Menu.

Flyers below.

Nicholas Kristof in NYT:

“…Indeed, 2017 is likely to be the best year in the history of humanity…Just since 1990, more than 100 million children’s lives have been saved through vaccinations and improved nutrition and medical care. They’re no longer dying of malaria, diarrhea or unpleasant causes like having one’s intestines blocked by wriggling worms….

…For most of history, probably more than 90 percent of the world population lived in extreme poverty, plunging to fewer than 10% today. Every day…250,000 people graduate from extreme poverty…About 300,000 get electricity for the first time. Some 285,000 get their first access to clean drinking water….now more than 85% [of adults] can read. Family planning leads parents to have fewer babies and invest more in each. The number of global war deaths is far below what it was in the 1950s through the 1990s…

The truth is that the world today is not depressing but inspiring…. The most important historical force in the world today is not President Trump, and it’s not terrorists. Rather, it’s the stunning gains on our watch against extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease…”

First, and foremost, our hearts go out to the family of Officer Miosotis Familia after she perished in a senseless attack yesterday. We honor her service.

In the hopes of inoculating our communities from all forms of violence in the future we believe community policing is a vital step in the right direction.

Learn more here:

ABOUT NEIGHBORHOOD POLICING & LOCAL BUILD THE BLOCK NYC MEETINGS

Find a local Meeting here: 

MEET YOUR LOCAL COPS, RAISE SAFETY CONCERNS, BRAINSTORM SOLUTIONS

From the website:

Neighborhood Policing is the new direction of the NYPD, and the inspiration behind a new deployment model being implemented throughout the city, precinct by precinct. Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCOs) are already assigned in over half of New York’s precincts.  They aren’t the only officers serving your area, but they are leading the coordination of policing services and problem solving in your sector.  If you live in a precinct that has already incorporated the neighborhood policing deployment model, we hope you will attend Neighborhood Safety meetings and get to know your cops.  If your precinct hasn’t yet been assigned NCOs,  we hope you will sign up for email updates as the model expands.

THESE ARE YOUR COPS.

Under Neighborhood Policing, Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCOs) work every day in specific neighborhoods rather than being deployed in different spots around the city. This lets New Yorkers get to know their cops, and helps officers get to know the people, the challenges, and what it takes to make everyone in their neighborhood feel safe over time.

OFFICERS ARE OFF THE RADIO.

Neighborhood Policing ensures that NCOs and all officers spend significant time ‘off the radio,’ not simply racing from emergency to emergency. This gives officers more time to learn about and address problems in the neighborhood – and to work with community members toward collaborative and creative solutions.

SOLVING PROBLEMS AND FIGHTING CRIME.

Neighborhood Policing helps officers fight crime, while also finding ways to defuse and solve problems by engaging in collaborative problem solving with the people of their community.

“Outreach workers have requested more pop-up homeless outreach sites. We think the Stanton Building could serve that purpose. We have a crisis. Intelligently shared resources must be committed to solve the reality of climate change and the burgeoning homeless population.  As we take the (realistically) slow but concrete and steady steps to end these crises, these are rational and humane ways forward.

We get a park anchor for safety, a community meeting site in the evenings, a climate resiliency lab and emergency hub, a youth after-school training center in all things ‘Green’. Everyone wins. No one is left behind.” – SDR Coalition.

From Politico NY:

“An annual count of the city’s unsheltered population showed a 40 percent increase in homeless people on city streets, despite the efforts of the de Blasio administration to curb the rising rate of homelessness.

…It was the largest number since 2005, when the city first began estimating the unsheltered population.

“The de Blasio administration has dramatically increased funding for services for unsheltered homeless people, increasing funding by 250% since 2013 …

[Commissioner Steve] Banks said these services will have their full effect this year, as 260 more Safe Haven beds … 500 new supportive housing units, and the increased outreach staff will be in the field long enough to have developed relationships with homeless people. He said it takes on average five months to develop a relationship and bring someone in off the street.

“To us the most important thing is…the individuals that we are working with on a daily basis to bring them in off the streets,” Banks said. He noted that outreach teams helped 748 individuals come in off the streets last year.

The estimated number of unsheltered homeless people confirms what outreach teams…were seeing… The teams have a list of more than 2,000 individuals who they know by name and a list of more than 1,500 additional individuals they know of and are trying to work with.

…One goal and product of the increased outreach funding was to identify every unsheltered homeless person and have them included in the city’s caseload.”

How cities and citizens are turning back privatization